Vocal Apple shareholders argue proposals, dominate questions

At Apple's annual shareholder meeting, the board of directors was elected to …

Apple's annual shareholder meeting occurred earlier today, and although the meeting was only an hour long, there was a decent amount of activity. Uh, sort of. The board members were, of course, elected to serve another one-year term, and the absent Steve Jobs received a birthday serenade, but the rest of the meeting was monopolized by comments and questions related to the four shareholder proposals that were put to a vote at the meeting.

The shareholder proposals, which were published back in January, made recommendations that Apple more fully disclose lobbying expenses, reform its healthcare, report on climate change efforts, and let shareholders vote on executive compensation. One shareholder in particular had much to say about each of the proposals, who discussed "criminal conspiracies related to Al Gore" and the "socialists" at the meeting, among other things. Shareholders also asked about succession plans, to which a board member, Arthur Levinson, responded that succession plans are discussed. Levinson also noted that Steve Jobs is still "deeply involved in all strategic matters."

In a rather unsurprising finish, none of the shareholder proposals garnered enough votes to pass, but that didn't stop comments on the proposals from spilling over into the question period. Folks asked questions about iLife and the Macworld Expo, but the majority of the (already short) question period involved the failed proposals. A number of shareholders were apparently not too happy with how much time was taken up by other issues, but I doubt the meeting will get substantially longer next year. Still, for a company that so many people are interested in, one hour every year isn't a lot of time to dedicate to these kinds of company issues.

So, should Apple report on the number of toilet flushes as contributing to their "eco footprint"? How about the number of heavy-breathing journalists writing puff pieces about every single skerrick of Apple development as being a contribution to CO2 production?

On next years' agenda, Apple should be more "transparent" about its upcoming products, and MacRumours should be officially notified of new product releases three months in advance.

We should also be allowed to have regular DNA samples of Steve Jobs' hair so we can sequence it to find where the RDF comes from.

Apple should then vote to give one gilded dulcimer to every disadvantaged child on Mars.

I understand why people get annoyed with crazy people who throw around baseless epithets instead of actually accusing anyone of anything substantial. What I do not get is why everyone thinks it's bad for the people who own a company (share holders) should have a say in how much the people who run the company get paid. Is it really a good idea to let them dictate their own salary? Do people only complain when it's an automaker executive that's earning 10's of $millions in compensation?

Interesting to me is that an executive's pay is frequently pure investment/play money since virtually all of their expenses are paid by the company. Food, transportation, new computers, cell phones, internet/phone service, some/all clothing, etc. are paid for. If an executive does any work from home their housing costs are often paid by the company. Imagine how much farther your paycheck would go if damn-near EVERYTHING you currently pay for was covered by your company?

I think that there are some companies with executive leadership that is excellent and they deserve to be rewarded, but I don't understand why owners in a company would voluntarily give up the one tool they have to keep that in check. The big irony? to my whole post is that Steve Jobs has maintained an almost laughably low compensation package relative to other US companies (though it would be nice to have one's own jet with all costs prepaid...). The counterpoint is that he has been debatably the most successful CEO of in the world despite.